


Post Workout

by Sarcastic_Raspberry



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Ruby & Sapphire & Emerald | Pokemon Ruby Sapphire Emerald Versions
Genre: Alphafemaleshipping, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Multi, Trans!Tabitha, gym!AU, hardenshipping - Freeform, seamountsshipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 00:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3467480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarcastic_Raspberry/pseuds/Sarcastic_Raspberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the magma squad follows Courtney to a gym only to find that she's been scoping out the aquas, Maxie wants in. As such, a reluctant Tabitha follows their lead. Also, I love Gym AUs<br/>Entire fic based off of this picture by funkyfreshcephalopods.<br/>http://funkyfreshcephalopods.tumblr.com/post/107548776223/au-scribble-team-aqua-works-out-at-a-local-gym<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Post Workout

The small coffee shop was where Tabitha, Maxie and Courtney sat themselves for their daily get together. They always took a bit of time out of their busy schedules to meet up and just sort of talk about life. As of late, however, they didn’t do much talking at their meetings.

Tabitha had never been what one would call a people person, but that didn’t stop him from noticing that something was wrong with Courtney. The normally quiet girl was even quieter than usual, and he wasn’t the only one that noticed. Maxie was giving him shifty glances every time Courtney looked down at her phone.

“Courtney,” Maxie finally said, “what has you so quiet?”

“Calculating… What are you talking about? I’ve always been quiet,” she said slowly.

Tabitha rolled his eyes, “Yea, but not this quiet, not to mention that your posture is about one million times better today. So, tell us, what’s up in your old hard drive?”

“I just have some really bad abdominal pains so I’m sitting up a bit straighter, it’s nothing. I just have somewhere I have to be after this,” Courtney said as she sipped at her to-go cup. A low buzz erupted through the table and her eyes flickered to her phone. “Downloading… That would be my cue. See you tomorrow.”

They didn’t have any time to ask what this appointment was about before Courtney was already gathering up her bag and subsequently walking away from their small table and out the door.

“We’re following her,” Maxie said as he brought his straw to his lips. “She’s hiding something.”

“Yea but, I don’t know, isn’t that a little intrusive?” Tabitha asked.

“She’s been like this for a month now, and I’m sick of it. It’s time we got some answers,” he said as he shot up from the table and stormed out after their friend.

Having paid at the counter, both of them got out in time to see their friend turning a corner. Knowing the road to not have many turns, they didn’t do more than a slow jog to get to the corner. This repeated itself for some time, until they finally saw her walk into a building. That was when they basically sprinted from a corner to see just what the name of the building was. When they got there, shock painted itself over Maxie’s face.

“A gym?” he asked, more to himself than Tabitha. “Since when does Courtney go to a gym?”

“Doesn’t she have asthma?” Tabitha asked. “I mean, I know there are less strenuous exercises, but she doesn’t even walk for too long. Remember that time you carried her home and-”

“Yes, and that wasn’t because of her asthma- she was just being lazy. That’s precisely why she would never be caught dead in a gym. We’re getting to the bottom of this instant.”

“But, Maxie, we don’t exactly have gym clothes on us right now,” Tabitha said.

“You don’t need gym clothes to just walk in, right?” Maxie said with a roll of his eyes. His eyes widened when he spotted something inside. “Look, she’s not even in the gym area, she’s just at the front desk!”

Before another word got out, he walked inside and marched up to their friend while Tabitha stood in the door way, wondering what if he should do the same. He resigned to doing so, giving in to the air conditioned gym. He regretted this decision as soon as Maxie started talking.

“Courtney, how dare you go to a gym?” he asked.

Tabitha almost laughed out loud at the face the receptionist pulled, but then he had remembered that this wasn’t a video on the internet, he was involved and now was the time to be embarrassed.

“Calculating… Maxie, the way I take care of myself doesn’t concern you. What are you doing here anyway?” Courtney asked.

“Courtney, no offense,” Maxie said, “but you are the laziest person I have ever met. Not to mention, even if you were going to a gym, why wouldn’t you tell us?”

Just then, the bell on the door behind Tabitha rang. At seeing Courtney’s normally stoic eyes fly wide open, he turned around to see who walked in. What he saw was not one lone person. It was a group of three very tall, very muscular, and very loud people. Did he mention the muscles? Good, because that’s what they were: Walking muscle. They walked right past the trio and to the counter where the largest of them, a man, talked to the receptionist.

“Hey, lavender!” the only girl of the group said as she walked over. “Good to see you again!” She slung an arm around Courtney’s shoulders.

Courtney seemed flustered and didn’t know what to do until she finally said, “Hello, Shelly. It’s nice to see you as well.”

 _That’s odd_ , Tabitha thought. _She usually says something computer related when she has to think about things for too long like that._ He wrote it off as he noticed Courtney wasn’t the only one getting flustered. His eyes traveled to, not the largest, but the tallest man in the group. This guy wasn’t even paying attention to the group behind him as he laughed along with the receptionist and his friend.

“Are these your friends?” the woman, Shelly, asked as she looked them over.

The question caused both Tabitha and Maxie to focus on Shelly and Courtney.

“Yes,” Courtney said. “This is Maxie, and this is Tabitha.”

Tabitha waved quickly and smiled politely, but all Maxie did was a crisp wave.

“Well, nice to meet ya! See ya later, lavender!” Shelly said, walking away from the group as she followed the men she entered the gym with into the actual gym area.

Courtney followed her with an expression Tabitha could only render as horrified, yet soft.

“Now I see what’s going on here,” Maxie said. Tabitha braced himself for him to scold Courtney on leaving them for another group of friends, but what he heard instead was, “and I want in.”

“Calculating…” So the phrase returned. “Error. What?”

“We’re going to start ‘working out’ with you.”

Tabitha jumped forward. “No way! Maxie, you know how I feel about exorcising in public.”

“Come on Tabitha! This could be a great bonding activity for all of us,” Maxie said.

Tabitha leaned in close and whispered threateningly into Maxie’s ear, “You just want to stare at that walking muscle’s ass and _you know it._ I’m _not_ doing this.”

* * *

Five minutes later, they were all dressed in gym clothes. As it turned out, the gym had a gift shop where one could by dreadfully expensive workout clothes. Courtney had actually gotten her own clothes at that shop, which almost prompted Maxie into getting a matching outfit. The most she allowed him was a similar shirt.

Now they were out in the gym area in the proper gym wear, and Maxie and Tabitha had no idea what to do. They attempted to follow Courtney’s lead. She immediately got down on a mat and started performing multiple sets of crunches and sit ups. _So that’s why her stomach was hurting her,_ Tabitha thought with a roll of his eyes. That’s when he noticed what as in her line of sight: Mirrors. Mirrors in front of the weights. Mirrors that reflected the trio from across the room. She could see them, but they didn’t know she was watching. Genius.

He looked at Maxie, who had taken up the same plan, only with a pair of dumbbells, with a meek weight of six pounds each. Now Tabitha just needed something he could do. He didn’t want to go through the embarrassment of sit ups, but he didn’t want to be perceived as a wimp like Maxie was obviously going to be. So he took a place in the corner on one of the treadmills. He set it at a low pace and began at a slow pace. That was when he noticed where he was exactly. He was by the muscular bunch. Right there. And if it couldn't get any worse, the biggest of them was heading his way. Not the girl, not the tallest, the biggest. This guy was ripped and even had a large tattoo of some Greek lettering on his chest. How did Tabitha know this? Because the guy didn’t have the modesty to wear a shirt. He didn’t need it honestly because, as was stated, he was ripped.

“Hey,” he said as he started on the treadmill right next to him.

“Hey,” Tabitha said. He started getting self conscious when he noticed the man’s speed was a lot faster than his own, but he wasn’t the kind of guy to simply crank it up without thinking for nothing more than pride. He retained his pace, and simply didn’t look up.

* * *

The pattern kept up for the next three weeks. The group went out for coffee, and then they went to “exorcise” at the gym. Soon enough, they traded in coffee for  light reading at the library. This was due to the fact that they felt like crap after exercising, and found out that it may have been due to drinking milk products before a work out. Well, that may have been partially it. But it may have also been the fact that Tabitha told Maxie what a tool he looked like when he was “checking his form” while lifting tiny weights. This caused the man to start using actual machines. He started out with a leg press, and then bench pressing, but swiftly moved onto the relatively easy tricep dips. This gave him an excuse to “check his form". Occasionally, however, he would actually go back to one of the failed machines to see how he’d grown since then.

Courtney, on the other hand, was a machine all on her own. She cranked out sit-ups, crunches, planks, and any other ab workout you could imagine. Maxie had asked Tabitha once if he knew whether or not Courtney had any abs already. Truthfully, to his knowledge, everyone of their little group was a bit flabby. He didn’t know how she managed to do all of these work outs.

Then one day, she’d been planking and Tabitha hadn’t seen, as he wasn’t facing the mirrors, but then he heard this sickening thunk in the back of the room. She was only two inches above the ground, but she was their fragile princess. And, as with all fragile princesses, she broke easily. Surprisingly, by the time he got the machine off to turn around, Maxie wasn’t the only one at his friend’s side. Shelly was there, and the rest of her gang was on the way.

She had a towel and was wiping the blood from Courtney’s arm as the other girl tried not to cry. He got over soon enough and asked, “What happened?”

“She fell,” Maxie said, trying to hold Courtney’s back.

“It’s okay, baby. We’re gonna get you to the nurse, kay?” Shelly said.

Courtney nodded and followed her away. Maxie wasn’t far behind, but Tabitha took liberty of picking up the bloody mat from the floor, because no one should have to see that.

“Do you know where I can take this?” he asked one of the men. After all of this time, he didn’t know one of their names.

“Uh, yea,” the largest one said. “You can probably take it up to the front desk. I’ll go with you.”

The walk up to the receptionist was awkward, especially the part where Tabitha had to explain that the worst his friend could have was a broken nose and that she’d hurt herself doing one of the safest exorcises on the planet.

He brushed all of this off soon enough when she called one of the janitors to take care of the matt. They didn’t have a chance to go back in because Shelly and Maxie were already leading Courtney out of the gym area, bags in hand. She had to be lead, due to the fact that she was tilting her head back with her nose stuffed full of tissues.

“You okay, Courtney?” Tabitha asked.

“Calc- um… I’m fine,” she said.

So she’s conscious about it, Tabitha thought. It was, however, quite hard to be angry at the fact that Courtney was dropping her key phrase around these muscle heads when she was as helpless as she was.

“Here, baby, there are some chairs over here you can sit down in,” Shelly said, leading her towards them.

That was when the other man came through the gym area, holding two bags. He handed one to the larger male, whom Tabitha had forgotten about at this point. Honestly, that day was getting really stressful in general. But that was okay because Courtney’s nosebleed would calm down soon and then they could all go home.

For the moment however, he excused himself as he said, “I’ll go get your stuff Courtney, you just wait here,” and walked back into the gym area.

He walked up to the women’s locker room and sighed. He knew that this had to be one of the perks of being a transman. Even if he felt extremely uncomfortable going into girls bathrooms, he knew that he pretty much had too in this society. Not to mention, Courtney was by no means getting her own bag.

He was back out with the rest of them in no time, glad to see that the other squad had gone home. This left him to rant to his two friends.

“That’s it!” he said, “We’re never coming back here again! We’re not built for this. This is the kind of thing I expected. Yea it’s just a bloody nose this time, but one day Maxie’s gonna break something doing the leg thing, or I’m gonna fall of the treadmill, or you’re going to try one of the crunching machines and hurt something- or worse! We’re never coming back here again!”

“Maybe you’ll feel differently after tomorrow,” Maxie said somewhat quietly as he stared to the side while giving the back of his head a rough scratch.

“What do you mean?” Tabitha asked. He looked at Courtney. “What’s tomorrow?”

“Maxie and I scheduled a triple date. You’re welcome,” she said, head still tilted back on the chair.

“No! No ‘you’re welcome’! I didn’t want to be part of this in the first place, okay! I’m out, tell whichever of the giant squad you set me up with that I’m sick, because I’m not _doing this_!”

“Come on, Tab!” Maxie said. “Look at how much Courtney has gone through for this evening! Not to mention, it’s not like the gym is the worst place in the world! It’s actually really nice!” He mumbled under his breath, “And so is Matt.”

“Matt? Is that your gargantuan?” Tabitha asked.

“No,” Courtney said, “he’s your date.”

“Yes, it’s going to be Courtney and Shelly, You and Matt, and Archie and I.”

“So I finally learn their names just in time to skip out on a date with them? It’s about time,” Tabitha said with a roll of his eyes. Then he looked back at Maxie. The man looked deeply depressed by his actions and, as such, Tabitha let out a sigh. “Fine! One date, but that’s it so help me!”

Maxie jumped with a small, “Yes! Courtney, high five!”

Courtney then proceeded to pass out onto the floor. Honestly though, that poor receptionist.


End file.
